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Meet Some Very Big Dragons in the How to Train Your Dragon 2 Trailer

Meet Some Very Big Dragons in the How to Train Your Dragon 2 Trailer

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I don’t post a lot of movie trailers. We’re all about the books here at Black Gate. (And the games. And TV. Plus, snacks).

Okay. Truthfully, we cover a lot of ground here at Black Gate. But mostly, we’re all about promoting the best in neglected fantasy. And DreamWorks Animation’s 2010 feature How To Train Your Dragon was one of the best fantasy films of the last decade. Andrew Zimmerman Jones reviewed it for us here, calling it “Hands down, of the fantasy films I’ve seen this year, my favorite.”

I missed it in theaters and I wasn’t the only one. It wasn’t until my kids came screaming out of the basement and pulled me downstairs to watch it with them (for the fourth time) in the summer of 2011 that I realized just how fabulous it was. I won’t make that mistake with the sequel. In fact, I may camp out early to catch it on opening night (I know my kids will be up for it).

We showed you the teaser trailer last July; now Dreamworks has released the second full trailer. It’s packed with brand new characters, gorgeous visuals, surprises… and some very big dragons. Check it out below.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 was produced by DreamWorks Animation and directed by Dean DeBlois. The voice cast includes Gerard Butler, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, and Craig Ferguson. It’s scheduled for release in June.

Goth Chick News: Comic Book Fan Boys on the Big Screen (Fan Girls Rejoice)

Goth Chick News: Comic Book Fan Boys on the Big Screen (Fan Girls Rejoice)

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Four Color Eulogy-smallThis is as excited as I get about anything.

Back in February, I told you about a new project by our favorite indy film geniuses at Pirate Pictures, in which comic collectors finally get to be the film heroes — far overdue if you ask me.

And yes, the Black Gate crowd went wild over the idea – or as wild as you all get about anything.

So a couple weeks ago, I undertook a road trip to visit the creative team and ask them some questions about the inspiration for Four Color Eulogy; like how it happens that a bunch of comic fans were able to turn their passion into an actual movie?

I figured we’d sit around in a slightly grungy coffee shop and I’d capture all their witty banter on my handy digital recorder, then hustle home to Chicago and type it up for you.

But no. We’re way beyond grungy coffee shops now…

Instead, they suggested we meet “at the studio.”

And oh, by the way, why don’t we just roll out the actual movie cameras and film the interview instead?

Lighting? Sure! Sound guys? We’ve got plenty of them.

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House of Cards Kicked the Cat

House of Cards Kicked the Cat

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Houseofcards_RichardsonI mentioned Netflix’s wildly successful House of Cards in a recent Public Life of Sherlock Holmes posting. I’ve written a couple of screenplays that will be made into movies shortly before the Earth plunges into the sun.

Or more likely, sometime after that event. Just as I enjoy reading books on writing, I’ve also found lots to learn from books on screenwriting (which is a very different proposition).

A brief aside: Amazon (which should give me stock with the number of purchases I’ve made from them) includes screenwriting as a subcategory of “Humor & Entertainment.”

Not every screenwriting book is funny. In fact, the most useful ones generally aren’t! That said, we resume our normal programming.

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Firefly, A Retrospective Part 8 — A Look at Serenity

Firefly, A Retrospective Part 8 — A Look at Serenity

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Serenity poster-smallAs some of you know, I just finished a seven-part blog on this site about the Firefly television series. We laughed, we cried, we stared at Jayne’s hat… and now it’s time to move on to the movie.

I consider Serenity to be part of the television show. Like the second season we never got, but compressed into a feature film.

It begins with a little voice-over narration telling us about this fictional world, centering on the war between the Alliance and the Independents. Then we see River as a child in school, but it’s a dream. She is back in the Alliance lab that messed with her brain. Simon is there, posing as a VIP on an inspection tour. He breaks her out of the facility.

I’m glad the movie starts with this scene, because although we’d heard about how Simon freed River in the TV series, we never got to see it. And this makes a terrific set-up for the rest of the movie.

And then the movie does something clever. The scene of Simon and River’s escape is paused in mid-action, and shown to be just a recording. It’s being viewed by the Operative (he’s so cool he doesn’t even need a real name) at the lab where the escape happened. The Operative wants River back because she may have learned the secrets of the Alliance leaders and that cannot be allowed. So the chase is on.

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Star Trek Continues with “Lolani” and Soars to Warp Eight

Star Trek Continues with “Lolani” and Soars to Warp Eight

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lolani 3Last year I gushed about a lovingly crafted fan-made original Star Trek episode, “Pilgrim of Eternity,” and concluded by writing that I hoped the same team would make more.

And lo, it has come to pass. As a matter of fact, I somehow missed news of a Kickstarter (or Kirkstarter) in October AND the release of a second episode, “Lolani,” in February. According to the Star Trek Continues web site, a third episode has been filmed and is already being edited. The Kickstarter raised enough money for three additional episodes (of which the “in edit” episode is the first) and — if I’m not mistaken — gained the funds to construct a replica of the Enterprise engine room to add to their existing sets.

If you’re a fan of the original Star Trek series, you MUST watch “Lolani.” Even moreso than “Pilgrim of Eternity,” it feels like a lost episode. It’s not just the sets and the effects, which are truly astonishing in their faithfulness, it’s the pacing, and the music cues, and the fadeouts, and the story beats, and the writing — and the actors. These people understand who the original characters were and inhabit them — and I swear that this script could stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest entries in the original run.

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From the Celluloid Cellar: Star Wars

From the Celluloid Cellar: Star Wars

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Star Wars poster Long-time science fiction fans will likely be familiar with Star Wars, if only by its reputation. Initially a flop at the box office, it survives today mostly as a midnight movie curiosity. Indeed, it took studios over a decade to invest in another big-budget science fiction film after the massive failure of George Lucas’s love letter to the movie serials of the 1930s. But an objective review shows that it’s not nearly as bad as word-of-mouth makes and, once the plot finally gets moving, is actually a lot of fun, despite (maybe a little because of) its many flaws.

So, the plot? In a distant galaxy, an evil empire rules the many inhabited worlds with an iron fist. Cue the ragtag rebellion trying to free the galaxy from the Empire’s control. First problem with the plot? The Galaxy, Empire, and Rebellion are unnamed in this film, each going simply by a definitive article.

The leader of the Rebellion is Princess Leia (played by Carrie Fisher, daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher), dressed all in white like a virgin sacrifice, but carrying a bad-ass ray gun. The main bad guy? There is an Emperor (mentioned, but never seen) and General Tarkin (played by Peter Cushing as a delightfully over-the-top space nazi); but the clear face of evil is Tarkin’s chief lieutenant, Darth Vader. A seven-foot tall wizard dressed in head-to-toe black armor, face covered by a black Shogun skull mask and voiced as pure hate incarnate by James Earl Jones, it’s hard to imagine this film was ever marketed to children with this walking nightmare engine chewing the scenery. The scenes between eighteen year-old wisp Fisher and this creepy heavy-breathing monster are especially disturbing.

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Doctor Who and the Daemons – the Novel!

Doctor Who and the Daemons – the Novel!

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Daemons002 More than once on Black Gate, I’ve heard that the seventies were a dead zone for science fiction and fantasy. For teens in search of readily available genre “gateway drugs,” I suppose this might have been true for many, but my particular experience of growing up managed, against all odds, to be different. Ohio was my home base, a vanilla environment for “culture” of the fantastical sort, but luckily I had a smorgasbord of British relatives. One especially perceptive and sibylline aunt started sending me Doctor Who novelizations.

Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion, that was the first I tried. Next, one of the best offerings in the canon, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.  I was in third grade and after facing down those blank-eyed Autons and their Nestene masters, I was hooked.

Note that I wasn’t in any way watching the TV show. In Columbus, Ohio, it simply wasn’t available, not until the early eighties, and then, when PBS did pick up a few random episodes, it was Tom Baker’s roost to rule. The Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, and William Hartnell adventures I first encountered were absent entire.

What Tom Baker’s run taught me is that talented actors can be mired forever in substandard scripts and even worse special effects. This was a total and unpleasant surprise, because the novelizations were fast-paced genre gems, especially those penned by Terrance Dicks.  (Malcolm Hulke was the other regular adapter for the Doctor Who franchise, with a rotating cast of fellow contributors including Gerry Davis, Ian Marter, and David Whitaker.) How could such pacey, adrenaline-filled books arise from such hokey, hamstrung screen material?

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The Top Five Differences Between HBO’s Game of Thrones and George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones

The Top Five Differences Between HBO’s Game of Thrones and George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones

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Game of Thrones-smallIt’s rare a show comes along that leaves readers wondering whether the book or screen version is better.

Generally speaking, film and television adaptations rarely live up to the complexity and depth of novels. In an effort to condense plot and keep things moving relatively quickly, and understandably, shows and films often act as the tip of the iceberg.

The original works, however, are more likely to reveal the underlying complexities (the rest of the iceberg, you might say) and true personalities of most of the characters. And, as expected, whole scenes are generally chopped from the film version due to lack of time.

So, of course, when a show like Game of Thrones comes along (the fourth season of which will be starting next week), that has some fans claiming the show is as good, perhaps even better, than George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, then we have no choice but to examine the merits of each.

In my opinion, the show lacks in several major areas. First: relationships.

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Do You Have the Time?

Do You Have the Time?

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Time-MachineSpider Robinson, in his brilliant and moving story “The Time-Traveler,” pointed out that we’re all time travellers really. We’re all moving into the future at the rate of one second per second.

As those of you who read last week’s post might realize, Robinson’s talking – in a way – about a subjective experience. The protagonist of the story experienced the passage of ten years of time in a manner completely different from that of the rest of the world. To the other characters (and the readers) the present is merely the present, because they (and we) had experienced the intervening years in the normal way. Because the protagonist hadn’t, it felt to him as though he’d stepped ten years into the future.

If that sounds a bit confusing, I urge you to find the story (it’s collected in Callaghan’s Crosstime Saloon) and read it for yourself.

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Goth Chick News: Something Wicked Is Coming Back This Way…

Goth Chick News: Something Wicked Is Coming Back This Way…

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Something Wicked this way comes poster-smallOkay, at this point it’s pretty clear that Hollywood is out to remake every story that ever freaked us out as kids.

Last month, we heard Cary Fukunaga (True Detective) is finally set to direct an IT remake after five years in development hell. That was OK, since it’s not like clowns were ever going to be funny and harmless again anyway.

But this week, we learn that Disney is taking another run at their 1983 film version of Something Wicked This Way Comes and once again I heave that sigh which basically says ‘there they go f’ing up another classic.’

Not that the movie version of Something Wicked is entirely a “classic” that did well the first time around – because it didn’t.

Bradbury actually scripted the original film, but he and the director Jack Clayton had a difference of opinion over the tone of the movie. Clayton wanted something more “family-friendly” and Disney had a revised draft produced without Bradbury; but the first cuts of the film tested poorly. Additional effects and a new score were added and Bradbury was brought back in to write new material.

But it was too little too late. Bradbury always claimed much of his intentions for the movie were destroyed and Disney barely broke even.

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